April 19.
6 a. m. — Rain still, a fine rain. The robin sang early this morning over the bare ground, an hour ago, nevertheless, ushering in the day.
Then the guns were fired and the bells rung to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of a nation's liberty.
The birds must live on expectation now. There is nothing in nature to cheer them yet.
That last flock of geese yesterday is still in my eye. After hearing their clangor, looking southwest, we saw them just appearing over a dark pine wood, in an irregular waved line, one abreast of the other, as it were breasting the air and pushing it before them. It made you think of the streams of Cayster, etc., etc. They carry weight, such a weight of metal in the air. Their dark waved outline as they disappear. The grenadiers of the air. Man pygmifies himself at sight of these inhabitants of the air. These stormy days they do not love to fly; they alight in some retired marsh or river. From their lofty pathway they can easily spy out the most extensive and retired swamp. How many there must be, that one or more flocks are seen to go over almost every farm in New England in the spring.
That oak by Derby's is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands like an athlete and defies the tem pests in every direction. It has not a weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like stereo typed gray lightning on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the sides of ships against the Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its well- developed muscles.
I saw yesterday that the farmers had been out to save their fencing-stuff from the flood, and everywhere it was drawn above high-water mark.
The North River had fallen nearly a foot, which I cannot account for, unless some of the dams above had broken away or been suddenly raised [sic]. This slight difference in the character of the tributaries of a river and their different histories and adventures is interesting, — all making one character at last.
The willow catkin might be the emblem of spring. The buds of the lilac look ready to take advantage of the first warm day. The skin of my nose has come off in consequence of that burning of the sun reflected from the snow.
A stormy day. 2 p. m. — With C. over Wood's Bridge to Lee's and back by Baker Farm.
It is a violent northeast storm, in which it is very difficult and almost useless to carry an umbrella. I am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry. It is a wind to turn umbrellas.
The meadows are higher, more wild and angry, and the waves run higher with more white to their caps than before this year. I expect to hear of shipwrecks and of damage done by the tide. This wind, too, keeps the water in the river. It is worth the while to walk to-day to hear the rumbling roar of the wind, as if it echoed through the hollow chambers of the air. It even sounds like thunder sometimes, and when you pass under trees, oaks or elms, that overhang the road, the sound is more grand and stormy still. The wind sounds even in open fields as if on a roof over our heads. It sounds as if amid sails.
The mists against the woods are seen driving by in upright columns or sections, as if separated by waves of air. Drifting by, they make a dimly mottled land scape.
What comes flapping low with heavy wing over the middle of the flood ? Is it an eagle or a fish hawk ? Ah, now he is betrayed, I know not by what motion, — a great gull, right in the eye of the storm. He holds not a steady course, but suddenly he dashes upward even like the surf of the sea which he frequents, showing the under sides of his long, pointed wings, on which do I not see two white spots ? He suddenly beats upward thus as if to surmount the airy billows by a slanting course, as the teamster surmounts a slope. The swallow, too, plays thus fantastically and luxuriously and leisurely, doubling some unseen corners in the sky. Here is a gull, then, long after ice in the river. It is a fine sight to see this noble bird leisurely advancing right in the face of the storm.
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original [sic], or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived. The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discovery of the andromeda phenomenon. It makes all those parts of the country where it grows more attractive and elysian to me. It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world. At sight of any redness I am excited like a cow.
To-day you can find arrowheads, for every stone is washed bright in the rain.
On the Miles road, the Bceomyces roseus is now in perfection. Seen on the clay-like surface, amid the dark dead birch and pine leaves, it looks like a mi nute dull-pinkish bloom, a bloom on the earth, and passes for a terrene flower. It impresses me like a mildew passing into a higher type. It covers large tracts of ground there [with] a pink color. C. calls it flesh-colored, but it is high-colored for that.
Observed the thistle again covered with the beads of rain-drops and tinged with purple on the edges of the leaves. It impressed me again as some rich fruit of the tropics ready to be eaten with a spoon. It suggests pineapples, custard-apples, or what is it? The pasture thistle.
All the farmers' cart-paths (for their meadow-hay) are now seen losing themselves in the water.
In the midst of this storm I see and hear the robin still and the song sparrow, and see the bluebird also, and the crow, and a hawk a-hunting (a marsh hawk?), and a blue woodpecker, I thought about the size of the hairy.
The meadow from Lee's causeway, looking northeast against the storm, looks dark and, as C. says, slate-colored. I observe that, to get the dark color of the waves, you must not only look in the direction whence they come, but stand as low and nearly on a level with them as possible. If you are on the top of a hill, light is reflected upward to you from their surface.
In all this storm and wet, see a muskrat's head in the meadow, as if some one thrust up a mop from below, — literally a drowned rat. Such independence of the moods of nature! He does not care, if he knows, when it rains. Saw a woodchuck out in the storm. The elder buds are forward. I stood by Clematis Brook, hearing the wind roar in the woods and the water in the brook; and, trying to distinguish between these sounds, I at last concluded that the first was a drier sound, the last a wetter. There is a slight dry hum to the wind blowing on the twigs of the forest, a softer and more liquid splashing sound to the water falling on rocks.
Scared up three blue herons in the little pond close by, quite near us. It was a grand sight to see them rise, so slow and stately, so long and limber, with an undulating motion from head to foot, undulating also their large wings, undulating in two directions, and looking warily about them. With this graceful, lim ber, undulating motion they arose, as if so they got under way, their two legs trailing parallel far behind like an earthy re siduum to be left behind. They are large, like birds of Syrian lands, and seemed to oppress the earth, and hush the hillside to silence, as they winged their way over it, looking back toward us. It would affect our thoughts, deepen and perchance darken our reflections, if such huge birds flew in numbers in our sky. Have the effect of magnetic passes. They are few and rare. Among the birds of celebrated flight, storks, cranes, geese, and ducks. The legs hang down like a weight which they [ ?] raise, to pump up as it were with its [sic] wings and convey out of danger. The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of. I saw, looking from the railroad to Fair Haven Hill soon after we started, four such, — the wood on E. Hubbard's meadow, dark but open; that of Hubbard's Grove, showing the branches of the trees; Potter's pitch pines, perhaps one solid black mass with outline only distinct; Brown's on the Cliff, but dimly seen through the mist, — one above and be yond the other, with vales of mist between.
To see the larger and wilder birds, you must go forth in the great storms like this. At such times they frequent our neighborhood and trust themselves in our midst. A life of fair-weather walks might never show you the goose sailing on our waters, or the great heron feeding here. When the storm increases, then these great birds that carry the mail of the seasons lay to.
To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.
In pleasant sunny weather you may catch butterflies, but only when the storm rages that lays prostrate the forest and wrecks the mariner, do you come upon the feeding-grounds of wildest fowl, — of heron and geese.
The light buff( ?)-colored hazel catkins, some three inches long, are conspicuous now.
The guns were fired and the bells rung to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of a nation's liberty. See April 19, 1855 ("The guns are firing and bells ringing")
Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. See April 17, 1852 ("The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. It is clear up tight to the shore on the south side, — dark-gray cold ice, completely saturated with water. The air from over it is very cold.")[In Thoreau’s records, the latest ice out occurred April 18th]. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out
The North River had fallen nearly a foot, which I cannot account for, unless some of the dams above had broken away or been suddenly raised [sic]. This slight difference in the character of the tributaries of a river and their different histories and adventures is interesting, — all making one character at last.
The willow catkin might be the emblem of spring. The buds of the lilac look ready to take advantage of the first warm day. The skin of my nose has come off in consequence of that burning of the sun reflected from the snow.
A stormy day. 2 p. m. — With C. over Wood's Bridge to Lee's and back by Baker Farm.
It is a violent northeast storm, in which it is very difficult and almost useless to carry an umbrella. I am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry. It is a wind to turn umbrellas.
The meadows are higher, more wild and angry, and the waves run higher with more white to their caps than before this year. I expect to hear of shipwrecks and of damage done by the tide. This wind, too, keeps the water in the river. It is worth the while to walk to-day to hear the rumbling roar of the wind, as if it echoed through the hollow chambers of the air. It even sounds like thunder sometimes, and when you pass under trees, oaks or elms, that overhang the road, the sound is more grand and stormy still. The wind sounds even in open fields as if on a roof over our heads. It sounds as if amid sails.
The mists against the woods are seen driving by in upright columns or sections, as if separated by waves of air. Drifting by, they make a dimly mottled land scape.
What comes flapping low with heavy wing over the middle of the flood ? Is it an eagle or a fish hawk ? Ah, now he is betrayed, I know not by what motion, — a great gull, right in the eye of the storm. He holds not a steady course, but suddenly he dashes upward even like the surf of the sea which he frequents, showing the under sides of his long, pointed wings, on which do I not see two white spots ? He suddenly beats upward thus as if to surmount the airy billows by a slanting course, as the teamster surmounts a slope. The swallow, too, plays thus fantastically and luxuriously and leisurely, doubling some unseen corners in the sky. Here is a gull, then, long after ice in the river. It is a fine sight to see this noble bird leisurely advancing right in the face of the storm.
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original [sic], or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived. The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discovery of the andromeda phenomenon. It makes all those parts of the country where it grows more attractive and elysian to me. It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world. At sight of any redness I am excited like a cow.
To-day you can find arrowheads, for every stone is washed bright in the rain.
On the Miles road, the Bceomyces roseus is now in perfection. Seen on the clay-like surface, amid the dark dead birch and pine leaves, it looks like a mi nute dull-pinkish bloom, a bloom on the earth, and passes for a terrene flower. It impresses me like a mildew passing into a higher type. It covers large tracts of ground there [with] a pink color. C. calls it flesh-colored, but it is high-colored for that.
Observed the thistle again covered with the beads of rain-drops and tinged with purple on the edges of the leaves. It impressed me again as some rich fruit of the tropics ready to be eaten with a spoon. It suggests pineapples, custard-apples, or what is it? The pasture thistle.
All the farmers' cart-paths (for their meadow-hay) are now seen losing themselves in the water.
In the midst of this storm I see and hear the robin still and the song sparrow, and see the bluebird also, and the crow, and a hawk a-hunting (a marsh hawk?), and a blue woodpecker, I thought about the size of the hairy.
The meadow from Lee's causeway, looking northeast against the storm, looks dark and, as C. says, slate-colored. I observe that, to get the dark color of the waves, you must not only look in the direction whence they come, but stand as low and nearly on a level with them as possible. If you are on the top of a hill, light is reflected upward to you from their surface.
In all this storm and wet, see a muskrat's head in the meadow, as if some one thrust up a mop from below, — literally a drowned rat. Such independence of the moods of nature! He does not care, if he knows, when it rains. Saw a woodchuck out in the storm. The elder buds are forward. I stood by Clematis Brook, hearing the wind roar in the woods and the water in the brook; and, trying to distinguish between these sounds, I at last concluded that the first was a drier sound, the last a wetter. There is a slight dry hum to the wind blowing on the twigs of the forest, a softer and more liquid splashing sound to the water falling on rocks.
Scared up three blue herons in the little pond close by, quite near us. It was a grand sight to see them rise, so slow and stately, so long and limber, with an undulating motion from head to foot, undulating also their large wings, undulating in two directions, and looking warily about them. With this graceful, lim ber, undulating motion they arose, as if so they got under way, their two legs trailing parallel far behind like an earthy re siduum to be left behind. They are large, like birds of Syrian lands, and seemed to oppress the earth, and hush the hillside to silence, as they winged their way over it, looking back toward us. It would affect our thoughts, deepen and perchance darken our reflections, if such huge birds flew in numbers in our sky. Have the effect of magnetic passes. They are few and rare. Among the birds of celebrated flight, storks, cranes, geese, and ducks. The legs hang down like a weight which they [ ?] raise, to pump up as it were with its [sic] wings and convey out of danger. The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of. I saw, looking from the railroad to Fair Haven Hill soon after we started, four such, — the wood on E. Hubbard's meadow, dark but open; that of Hubbard's Grove, showing the branches of the trees; Potter's pitch pines, perhaps one solid black mass with outline only distinct; Brown's on the Cliff, but dimly seen through the mist, — one above and be yond the other, with vales of mist between.
To see the larger and wilder birds, you must go forth in the great storms like this. At such times they frequent our neighborhood and trust themselves in our midst. A life of fair-weather walks might never show you the goose sailing on our waters, or the great heron feeding here. When the storm increases, then these great birds that carry the mail of the seasons lay to.
To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.
In pleasant sunny weather you may catch butterflies, but only when the storm rages that lays prostrate the forest and wrecks the mariner, do you come upon the feeding-grounds of wildest fowl, — of heron and geese.
The light buff( ?)-colored hazel catkins, some three inches long, are conspicuous now.
Beside the direct and steady rain, large drops fall from the trees and dimple the water. Stopped in the barn on the Baker Farm. Sat in the dry meadow-hay, where the mice nest. To sit there, rustling the hay, just beyond reach of the rain while the storm roars without, it suggested an inexpressible dry stillness, the quiet of the haymow in a rainy day; such stacks of quiet and undisturbed thought, when there is not even a cricket to stir in the hay, but all without is wet and tumultuous, and all within is dry and quiet.
Oh, what reams of thought one might have here! The crackling of the hay makes silence audible. It is so deep a bed, it makes one dream to sit on it, to think of it.
The never-failing jay still screams.
Standing in Pleasant Meadow, Conantum shore, seen through the mist and rain, looks dark and heavy and without perspective, like a perpendicular upon its edge.
Crossed by the chain of ponds to Walden. The first, looking back, appears elevated high above Fair Haven between the hills above the swamp, and the next higher yet. Each is distinct, a wild and interesting pond with its musquash house.
The second the simplest perhaps, with decayed spruce (?) trees, rising out of the island of andromeda in its midst, draped with usnea, and the mists now driving between them.
Saw the Veratrum viride, seven or eight inches high, in Well Meadow Swamp, — the greatest growth of the season, at least above water, if not above or below. I doubt if there is so much recent vegetable matter pushed above ground elsewhere; certainly there is not unless of pads under water. Yet it did not start so early as it has grown fast.
Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th.
Trillium Woods make a lee thirty or forty rods off, though you are raised twenty feet on the causeway.
That oak by Derby's is a grand object,. . .But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, See February 10, 1854 ("The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge has been cut down. It measures five feet and three inches over the stump, at eighteen inches from the ground.").
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! See . August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him"); July 7, 1851
Saw the Veratrum viride, seven or eight inches high, in Well Meadow Swamp, — the greatest growth of the season, at least above water, if not above or below. I doubt if there is so much recent vegetable matter pushed above ground elsewhere; certainly there is not unless of pads under water. Yet it did not start so early as it has grown fast.
Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th.
Trillium Woods make a lee thirty or forty rods off, though you are raised twenty feet on the causeway.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 19, 1852
("Knowledge does not come
to us by details but by
lieferungs from the gods.")
The guns were fired and the bells rung to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of a nation's liberty. See April 19, 1855 ("The guns are firing and bells ringing")
To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. See December 25, 1856 ("Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. "); February 28, 1852 ("To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin,"); March 8, 1859 (" If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage. . ., and come home as if from an adventure. There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out"); March 31, 1852 ("I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system."); April 13, 1852 ("I love to hear the wind howl"); May 13, 1852 ("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty")
Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. See April 17, 1852 ("The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. It is clear up tight to the shore on the south side, — dark-gray cold ice, completely saturated with water. The air from over it is very cold.")[In Thoreau’s records, the latest ice out occurred April 18th]. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out
The pasture thistle
covered with beads of rain-drops
and tinged with purple.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
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